Your Choice
by TheLazyBAMF
Summary: Everything was his fault. If only he was cleverer. If only he didn't ignore the signs. Mummy was right, he was very limited. So he would do everything to make sure that all the people he cares about are safe, even if he ends up being painted as a villain. My take on how Sherlock confronts Mycroft after TFP to make sure he's alright. Cross-posted on AO3


**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

 **A/N: Cross-posted from AO3 since I decided to move some of my work here as well because why not? I need love, reviews are appreciated though not mandatory.**

The east wind. A terrifying force that seeks out the unworthy and plucks them from the earth. Mycroft scoffed as he blew out smoke. He briefly wondered how many cigarettes it would take to fill his house with smoke, then again he supposes he only needs to fill this room with smoke.

If anyone were to burst through his door, they'd think the man sitting on a chair with bottles of alcohol surrounding him as smoke clouds their vision was a gambler who had a fall out with their wife. Mycroft Holmes sat on his armchair with just a plain white shirt, the jacket and waistcoat long forgotten in some chair around the house. His phone lay abandoned on a table in the corner. He had been receiving regular messages from his office though he never had the energy to get up and read them, the end of the world could happen and he wouldn't know.

All those years keeping those secrets. Maintaining the cold mask of indifference was difficult. He nearly thought that the mask wasn't there anymore. So sure that he really is the heartless reptile people think him to be. His predecessor once said that if you hide behind a mask for too long, you'll forget who you were beneath it. It was his luck that he was stuck half-way. As he usually is. He poured himself a glass as he extinguished the cigarette, ignoring how his hands shook ever so lightly.

"Stop whatever it is you're doing."

His door slammed open behind him, he paused but continued pouring after a second. He heard two sets of feet walking the short distance to his chair. He put the bottle down but made no move to grab the glass.

"Sherlock, Dr. Watson. To what do I owe the pleasure?" He sighed, refusing to turn around. "I need to know something." Sherlock muttered as he sat down on the chair opposite Mycroft.

"No clowns and tricks anymore? You may not need the information that much then." Mycroft crossed his arms and looked at anywhere but Sherlock. "Dr. Watson, do sit down."

"I'm fine, thanks. You however, aren't fine. At all."

"How are you?" Sherlock asked before his brother could conjure up a lie. He already has so much of them. "I'm fine, contrary to what Dr. Watson says." He rolled his eyes.

"Have you called mummy?" Mycroft raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. "Why would I? I'd be the last person she wants to speak with right now. I give it a few years." Mycroft grabbed the glass and took a sip. "You're hands are shaking." Sherlock remarked.

Mycroft met his brother's eye for a second before dropping them. "I know where you're going with this. And to save you the time, I am fine. I don't need a babysitter."

"Then start acting like a grown-up."

Mycroft lowered his head before downing the whole glass. He lit another cigarette. "That can't be good for your lungs." John took a step forward. "I'm an adult capable of making his own choices. I know the risks yet here I am."

The British official took a long drag. "Would you like some?"

"No. I'm trying to quit. There's a baby in the flat."

"Yes. Of course."

There was tense moment of silence where Mycroft kept his eyes on the floor and John awkwardly stood by the door.

"Mycroft, I need you to be honest-"

"Please leave."

"Pardon?"

Mycroft took another drag before answering. "Please leave, John. I would try to get rid of Sherlock but who knows what abomination he'll send in next time." he paused to consider his words. "I'm not trying to offend you, I know what my brother's thinking and it's ...personal."  
John nodded at Sherlock. "Well, I'll be outside then." He got out, leaving the door ajar.

"Sherlock, I meant what I said. I'm fine."

"Clearly you're not. Look at you. You haven't slept properly for days. You've smoked at least five packs of cigarettes and who knows how much alcohol is in your system. I'd have drugged you if I wasn't so worried-"

Mycroft scoffed. "I don't need you worrying over me. If you don't believe me then fine, I'll be alright. Just give me a few days."

"Not going to happen." Sherlock droned as he observed his brother. He really should have checked earlier.

Mycroft continued to smoke as his mind took off without his knowing. He observed the smoke surround his head. How many cigarettes does it take to fill the room with enough smoke enough to be worried of suffering smoke inhalation? Maybe he'll find out soon. Hopefully Sherlock would take the hint.

"Mycroft!"

He snapped back to reality as his brother yelled for him. His heart rate increased and his hands trembled. Loud sounds haven't been a trouble since his self-imposed exile. He sighed as he extinguished the cigarette. It was too distracting.

"What?"

"You need help." Sherlock was beginning to look like he cared.

"Looking back on how we were trapped in a situation where five people have died because of my choices, I'm inclined to say that maybe I do need help because I am such a bloody idiot." Sarcasm filled his words as Mycroft rolled his eyes.

"Have you forgotten? It was my choice that le-"

"Don't be daft Sherlock. This started long before Sherrinford."

Sherlock paused. His brother was breathing heavily, the sleepless nights, paranoia and the chemicals in his body are finally taking it's toll. His walls, what remained of it, were crumbling.

"This is all my fault."

"Don't say that."

"It's true. Perhaps I shouldn't have continued what uncle Rudi started. I should have been smarter. I should have been better."

"You couldn't have know. You were only doing your best."

"Exactly."

Sherlock snapped his head up. He looked at his brother's eyes. He saw the pain and guilt behind them. "What do you mean?"

Mycroft smiled as he rolled his eyes. "My phone has been ringing non-stop for the past few days. I made the mistake of putting off signing a deal before we left for Sherrinford. The deadline is in two days and I haven't read the rest of the paperwork. I'm assuming Anthea called you to snap me out of my thoughts."

"She has notified me, yes."

"Then tell her I won't be returning for a long time. No." Mycroft gazed at his trembling hand. "Tell her I won't be returning. Clearly my best isn't good enough, they need someone less limited."

Sherlock stood up. "Are you quitting? I never pegged you for a quitter. What will you do? Incarcerate yourself in this golden prison?"  
Mycroft looked at the ceiling as he shook his head. "Do you want to know something brother dear?"

Sherlock looked at him skeptically. He doesn't like the calm, emotionless tone.

"Running the country as you so called it once was a lot easier than cleaning up after you two. I could deduce what they wanted and I could make them give me what I wanted. But with you two-" Mycroft took a deep breath. "It was challenging. It was exhausting. I nearly snapped once, you know. Everything kept piling up Moriarty, Eurus, you, the country." Sherlock narrowed his eyes at his brother, urging him to go on.

"I just wanted to go home to our parents and just pretend we were children again. But that can't happen. Just the thought of spending time with them while I kept their daughter hidden from- Well," Mycroft chuckled humorously. "Anthea was practically glued to my side for a week after having some words with me.

"Mycroft, mummy and daddy forgives you-" Mycroft scoffed at him. "-I do as well. You've made some bad choices, but you meant well. We all know that you meant well."  
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Why are you so sure that I didn't lock her up because I was jealous?"

"Jealous?"

"Hmm. She was smarter, more adept at reading people. Maybe I simply didn't feel like taking care of a psychotic sibling, Lord knows how tiring you could be."

"Don't be absurd. Do you really want me to leave that badly? I could smell the lie a mile away." Sherlock raised an eyebrow at Mycroft.

"It was worth a shot. Did you know that back in the day, criminals were sent in isolation to think about what they've done? Possibly read the bible while they were at it. It was basically a grim version if a time-out."

"So?"

"You experienced solitary confinement. You know how hard it is."

Mycroft clenched his fist as he remembered being locked up all alone in that cell. Thinking about what he has done, the ramifications of his mistakes. How people would suffer for his foolishness.  
"Is that what you're doing? You plan to torture yourself with your own solitary confinement?"

Mycroft took a deep breath. And closed his eyes. "Mycroft! Stop shutting me out!"

Mycroft's eyes opened so quickly, Sherlock flinched back from the brightness of his brother's eyes. It was so wrong, his brother's blue eyes were always a pool of calm and peace. It was like a storm brewed within those eyes, an east wind looming over him. Something was seriously eating away his brother from the inside and Sherlock was afraid that they were too late.

"Mummy and Daddy always said I should be the grown-up. I gave you two my toys, everytime we fought mummy would always say that I should be the bigger person and let you win. That resulted in many jokes." Mycroft reminisced in a monotonous rumble, worrying Sherlock even more.

"I always wondered why I had to be the grown-up. Why I had to be the responsible one. Being the eldest had it's perks but still." He sighed remembering a young Sherlock wanting to play pirates with him after he forgot Eurus and Victor. _"Mycroft, don't shut me out. Come and play with me."_

He froze as an apparition of a young Sherlock appeared before him.

"Mycroft?"

He was thankful when the vision vanished. He closed his eyes as he covered his face with his hands. Everything hurts."Just tell them. Tell them why you did it, how you feel. I'm sure they'll-"

"Hate me for it even more? Of course they will. Mother and Father gave me everything I wanted. They loved me. All of us. But what did I do? I take away their daughter because I perceived her as a threat to anyone around her and herself. I made the adult decision to lose their trust so I could protect everyone I could. Have you any idea how it all felt? Everyday for almost three decades I had to balance everything. Eurus had to be secured, Moriarty needed to be monitored, YOU had to be monitored, the political aspects seem like childs-work compared to everything."

Sherlock could see everything Mycroft was experiencing with his mind's eyes. His brother pacing around, reading reports on one hand and talking to the phone in another, all the while thinking of something else in his brain. And he had the nerve to call his brother lazy.

"I had to be better. When you first ODed," Mycroft let out a sardonic smile "Let's just say my office couldn't contact me for three days. I always have to be better. I was the responsible one. I already failed my family once, I shouldn't do it again. So I covered for you. Not always, goodness knows you need some tongue lashing from our parents every once in awhile."

"Is that why you avoid them? Why you avoided me back then? The guilt? The responsibility?"

"What else? Eurus did a lot of things as a child that our parents never knew about."  
"You covered for her." Sherlock muttered.

"Of course I did. Look at what happened. I saw the signs but I ignored them because she was my sister. Maybe Victor wouldn't have died if I was smarter. Maybe we'd have known what was wrong if I had just been clever enough to decipher the code-"

"Will you for once in your life stop taking the blame?" Sherlock yelled as he stood up, towering over Mycroft.

"You always take the blame, Mycroft. Oh my sister is a little not good in the head, I must have done something to damage the poor child. Oh my little brother turned to drugs to avoid boredom, maybe I should have given him my smurfs when I was ten. Oh look, the operation that took twenty years failed because a little someone got cocky. Probably should have reigned him in before anything-"

Sherlock stopped talking as he observed Mycroft. He was biting his lip, his hands trembled and he was closing his eyes.  
He approached his brother, putting a hand in his shoulder before Mycroft flinched away.  
"You don't get it, Sherlock." Mycroft opened his eyes to look at his brother. Sherlock took a step back, concern filling his features as he observed thr brother he always took for granted.

"Everyone makes choices, everyday those choices change our lives no matter how small they were. I tried my best, I really did. I wanted to be the hero that solves all the problems." Mycroft felt a pull on his lips. "But heroes don't exist and after everything I did, I know I can never be one of them. Remember the knife incident I told you about? I wanted to know what was wrong with my sister back then, I read every book but nothing contained the answer. She had a fascination with you -you should get that looked at by the way, mentally unstable people are drawn to you- and after recent events, it's safe to conclude that she was hoping that you would understand her. After Victor's disappearance and the burning of Musgraves, I decided that I would rather send my sister to hell than to see my family get dragged down with her. I will always regret that choice but I knew without a doubt that I would regret not doing it more if the time came that more people suffered by her hand. Uncle Rudi took care of things and I took over after several years. I wanted to tell you but I knew how traumatized you were. Our parents were furious, of course." Mycroft smirked.

Sherlock didn't know what to think. He wanted to blame the alcohol but he knew his brother wasn't just rambling.

"Why are you telling me this? Why now?"

"You wanted to know. I am who I am because of the choices I made. Hiding behind the Iceman was easier but even ice isn't strong enough to shield me. It made decisions easier, every men I sent to their deaths seemed less human and more like a number when I'm the Iceman. I was almost convinced that I didn't have a heart left. But then it was always just a disguise. Once you go and get yourself in trouble,suddenly Big Brother mode is activated and the mask cracks."

"Well, you always were one for dramatics." The detective remarked as he looked away from the official.

"Quite so. Now then, off you go. You git what you wanted." Mycroft leaned back on his chair, his hands coming together in front of him like how Sherlock does while thinking.

"I don't thinks so."

Mycroft opened his eyes and raised hus eyebrow. "Pardon?"

"Nearly there but no. Not everything is always your fault Mycroft. Sure letting the two unpredictable variables such as our sister and Moriarty interact unsupervised was idiotic, you underestimated them so much. But I understand why you did it. It saved hundreds of people."

Mycroft hid his head in his hands.

"I used my sister to try and stop several terrorist attacks-"  
"That saved potential thousands. I come for you for help if a case is too difficult. You come to her when you have nowhere else to turn."

The detective paced around the small room as his brother stayed rooted in his seat.  
"You said that the mask of yours hides the real you, that it almost consumes you. You know what I learned from The Woman?" Mycroft kept his eyes covered.

"Your disguise is always your self portrait." Sherlock paused, looking around before boring his blue eyes at his brother's slumped form.

"You think I'm a slab of ice that could break given enough force and is almost absolutely useless in England?" He could hear his brother rolling his eyes.

"Those treats you gave her, a violin, those visits you have with her. You mask them as using her brain for the greater good instead of letting it rot away in the cell and maybe it was true. But you wanted to see her, you made sure that she was being cared for. You allowed them to meet for five minutes because you believed that saving millions of lives was worth the risk of whatever they talked about for five minutes."

Mycroft finally lifted his head up and met his brother's eyes. "If you look at the numbers, of course it did. But then again I wasn't provided with emotional context back then." Mycroft smiled ruefully.

"The Iceman. How wrong Moriarty was. You don't lack emotions, you froze them and made a wall around yourself. You believed that because your emotional side gave you a blind spot with Eurus, you had to get rid of it all unless you wanted to lose more people. You told me that caring was not an advantage because you cared too much. You grew up too quickly, Mycroft. You c-"

"Enough." Mycroft stood up as he yelled at his brother. "Enough alright. I don't need you to spout out all this half-baked theories-"

"You were always the responsible one. You should always know better. Why? Because you were the eldest? You made yourself be the villain of the story so that everyone you cared about could be safe, me, mummy and daddy, Eurus. You cared so much you didn't care that we wind up renting you as long as we were safe."

Mycroft's hands shook as he gritted out, "Oh Sherlock. I do love this fairytale, tell me another one."

"You wanted people to see you as a heartless bastard because if that was how they saw you they'll disregard any kindness they see from you. But you could never lie to me, could you?" Sherlock took a step closer to Mycroft. The elder flinched back ever so slightly but refrained from moving.  
"I am heartless. Have you forgotten how I blabbed about your life to Moriarty? You have no idea how many people are dead because of me. I killed a man before yet I couldn't kill the governor to save his wife. I didn't want you to see me like that."

"That's a lie."

"Stop pretending to know what's on my mind! Stop painting all these expectations on me because you and I both know I could never meet them." Mycroft hands shook so much he crossed his arms and looked anywhere but his brother.

Amidst the emotional atmosphere, something clicked in Sherlock's head. "You knew, didn't you?"

Mycroft feigned ignorance and raised an eyebrow.

"You knew. After we all knew there was only a bullet left, you knew what Eurus planned." Sherlock glared at him.

"It was obvious. A child could have figured it out."

"You purposely made yourself useless so I would choose you. But you couldn't keep yourself from helping me solve the Garridebs case." The detective's mind replayed the painful scene.

"Of course not. I didn't want anyone to die because of my actions-or lack thereof. It didn't make that much of a difference in the end, did it though?" Mycroft spat out as he kept looking for a way to fet away from the topic.

"Case and point. You do care. You care so much. For God sake, you were ready to take a bullet-"

"Because I would have deserved it!" Mycroft roared before falling back to his chair. "You should have pulled the trigger. It would have been easier for everybody involved."

"How could you expect me to shoot my brother? Do you thinks so little of me-"

"Do I have to spell it for you? John is your best friend, your only friend who has been the one responsible for the positive changes in your life. He has a daughter that will be orphaned if he dies and if you were the one to kill him, we both know that it would have killed you. I, on the other hand, am just another cog in the machine. I'm replaceable, my loss wouldn't have hurt that much people. And it was my fault to begin with. I'm just a rubbish brother who-"

Mycroft saw it coming. If he were not looking on the floor he would have noticed how his brother's hand clenched and aim for his face. His reflexes however was about to make him dodge when he stopped himself. He fell the the ground, not sure if it was because of the force of the punch or because he lacked the nutrients his body needed.

"Don't ever say that." Sherlock grabbed him by the collar, lifting him up.

"Is this the part where you tell me to get my hands off my life?" Mycroft could be so difficult sometimes.

"Since you don't like the easy way, I have a better idea. I'm going to regret hitting you like that." Sherlock muttered.

"Please come in now, we need chips here."

Mycroft got up, surely he would have heard Dr. Watson re-entering his home? He turned to the door only to widen his eyes and take a step back.

"Mycroft."

"I guess we could still surprise you."

Mycroft took a deep breath once he saw his parents entering the room. His father was holding a bag of groceries while his mother held a bag of chips.

He stood frozen as their parents dropped everything in a nearby table and approached him.

"Did you really have to hit him that hard, Sherlock?"

"You would have hit him too if you were in my position."

"How long...?" Mycroft's mind seemed to be broken. A syntax error has occured and he can't function properly.

"Since the beginning." His father smiled as he laid a hand on his shoulder.

Mycroft cast his mind back. That's why Dr. Watson stayed back. His parents mimicked Sherlock and John's footstep to mask their own, he didn't notice because he was too deep in his thoughts. That's why John left the door ajar.

"I'm so sorry." He muttered as he focused on the floor again.

Mummy hugged him tightly and a small part of him, the little boy he thought he locked up in ice, broke free. He hugged her as well, their father joining in as he pulled Sherlock with him.

"I know we weren't the best parents in the world, we might have said a lot of things in the heat of the moment. We're sorry Mycroft." Father said to his ear.

Mycroft felt a tightness in his chest. Tears threatened to spill. The weight on his shoulders seemed less heavy now. He let out a chuckle that turned into a sob. He took a deep breath, finally letting go of all the stress.

He wanted to cry, to laugh, to scream. Suddenly the absence of the weight seemed far too light. His head was too light and the warmth was so comforting. He closed his eyes, letting go after all these year, if only for a few moments.

"Mycie!"

Sherlock and Siger caught the collapsed form of Mycroft Holmes. "Don't worry, it's just all the alcohol and sleep-deprivation." Sherlock assured them.

"Why didn't you call us sooner then?" Violet almost cuffed her son on the head.

"Let's just put him to bed, dear." Siger had always been the voice of reason in their household.

Mycroft would wake up later, his home filled with the aroma of home-cooked food. They would have a nice family talk-where Sherlock threatens to drug him if he lies because his tongue is looser that way-after the brothers took a calming stroll, buying some chips that weren't really that bad.  
But for now, Mycroft Holmes is asleep in his bed and the nightmares can't get to him.

 **A/N: Ah sentiment. This was written almost immediately after the s4 finale and I was drowning in the feels. Hope you enjoyed!**


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